on the Logging
Camp Range, south of the Big Ox Bow, Roosevelt had a memorable
struggle with one of his four broncos. The camp was directly behind
the ranch-house (which the Eaton brothers owned), and close by was a
chasm some sixty feet deep, a great gash in the valley which the
torrents of successive springs had through the centuries cut there.
The horse had to be blindfolded before he would allow a saddle to be
put on him.

Lincoln Lang was among the cowboys who stood in an admiring circle,
hoping for the worst.

"Mr. Roosevelt mounted, with the blind still on the horse," Lang said,
telling the story afterward, "so that the horse stood still, although
with a well-defined hump on his back, which, as we all knew very well,
meant trouble to come. As soon as Mr. Roosevelt got himself fixed in
the saddle, the men who were holding the horse pulled off the blind
and turned him loose."

Here Bill Dantz, who was also in the "gallery," takes up the story:

"The horse did not buck. He started off quietly, in fact, until he was
within a few feet of the chasm. Then he leapt in the air like a shot
deer, and came down with all four feet buckled under him, jumped
sideways and went in the air a second time, twisting ends."

Here Lang resumes the narrative:

"Almost any kind of a bucking horse is hard to ride, but the worst of
all are the 'sunfishers' who change end for end with each jump,
maintaining the turning movement in one direction so that the effect
is to get the rider dizzy. This particular horse was of that type, and
almost simultaneous with the removal of the blind he was in gyroscopic
action.

"I am aware that Mr. Roosevelt did not like to 'pull leather,' as the
term goes, but this time at least he had to, but for the matter of
that there were not many who would not have done the same thing. As
nearly as I can remember, he got the horn of his saddle in one hand
and the cantle in the other, then swung his weight well into the
inside and hung like a leech. Of course, it took sheer grit to do it,
because in thus holding himself tight to the saddle with his hands, he
had to take full punishment, which can be avoided only when one has
acquired the knack of balancing and riding loosely.

"As it was, his glasses and six-shooter took the count within the
first few jumps, but in one way or another he hung to it himself,
until some of the boys rode up and got the horse headed into a
straightaway by the liberal use of thei